Well-posedness of the Muskat problem in subcritical $L_p$-Sobolev spaces

Abstract

We study the Muskat problem describing the vertical motion of two immiscible fluids in a two-dimensional homogeneous porous medium in an $L_p$-setting with $p\in(1,\infty)$. The Sobolev space $W^s_p(\mathbb{R})$ with $s=1+1/p$ is a critical space for this problem. We prove, for $s\in (1+1/p,2),$ that the Rayleigh-Taylor condition identifies an open subset of $W^s_p(\mathbb{R})$ within which the Muskat problem is of parabolic type. This enables us to establish the local well-posedness of the problem in all these subcritical spaces together with a parabolic smoothing property.